How To Take Care Of A Baby Chinchilla

Baby chinchillas are extremely cute and adorable. Anyone who sees one will definitely have the urge to bring it home. But before you adopt a chinchilla baby, there are many factors you need to consider, for the good of the potential pet.

The need for mother’s milk

Newborn kits need to depend on their mothers to breastfeed them. This is because their digestive systems are not strong enough to take in adult food. They will usually continue to breastfeed for 3-4 weeks before starting to eat hay and pellets.

If you intend to adopt a chinchilla baby, you’ll need to take extra precaution. You will either have to make sure that you have another mother chinchilla to feed the kit, or you will have to syringe feed goat milk to the baby a few times every day.

Our advice will be to hold off the adoption for a little while first. Let the baby chinchilla have enough time to feed and grow and eventually wean from mothers milk before you bring him home.

You existing adult chinchillas

With the exception of its own parent, if you have other existing adult chinchillas in your house, it is best that you separate the chinchilla baby in another cage for the time being. This is to prevent accidents like biting or adult chinchillas jumping onto the kit and injure it.

You can still arrange for daily playtime for them to bond under your supervision. But let them have their own spaces when it comes to sleeping overnight.

Cage settings

Height

Chinchillas love to climb and jump naturally. But that does not mean that they will not fall and get injured. In serious cases, a fall might even be fatal. This is especially true for a chinchilla baby whose feet are not strong enough to withstand the impact of a fall.

It is important that you do not install ledges or standing points that are too high in the cage. The baby chinchilla might be able to climb up, but jumping down is a different story.

Try to arrange everything on the ground level. If you want to install fanciful ledges, wait till they grow older. And do it progressively.

Flooring

Baby chinchillas have weak and fragile limbs. It is best to use solid flooring that covers the whole ground. Refrain from using flooring with holes or grills that might trap a chinchilla’s leg. This may cause they limb to be injured or even broken in serious cases.

Wall of the cage

Try to use a cage that has very narrow gap in between the grills on the wall. This is to prevent chinchilla from trying to escape and get stuck between the wires.

It is very important to make sure that your small baby chinchilla do not escape because they do not know how to take care of themselves when they are out of the cage. This is especially when your house is not yet chinchilla proof. They may jump onto a high surface and fall to death, or in many common cases, dehydrated due to over-activity.

Chinchilla baby’s health

Some chinchilla babies are born with health issues and it takes an experience owner to identify them quickly to seek medical help. Examples of such issues may include broken limbs, ear infection, eye cataracts, etc.

Most symptoms can be treated with over the counter medications. But because we are dealing with a baby chinchilla, the best advice to ensure the lifespan of this kit is to bring it to a vet. Read more about chinchilla lifespan in this post.

If you can wait, wait.

Finally, our last advice will be to think twice when attempting to adopt a chinchilla baby. It is best to keep the kit with its mother until grown up age. However, if you are met with unforeseen situation where you have to adopt a newborn chinchilla, we hope that the above tips will be beneficial to you.